What He Does Best

Chapter 4

Warning: Mentions of abuse

Peter grabbed his phone, hoping against all hope that it was Neal calling him. When he looked at the number, he realized with a sinking heart that he didn't recognize it.

"Special Agent Peter Burke…..Who is this?!"

"Peter, it's me. I need….."

Relief shot through him at the sound of Neal's voice, followed by a quick flash of anger.

"Neal, where the hell are you?!" Peter demanded. His righteous anger quickly turned to terror when he heard the distinct sound of gunfire coming over the phone, followed by a piercing cry from Neal. He wasn't sure, but he thought that maybe Neal had dropped the phone, too.

"NEAL! What's going on?! NEAL!"

Peter frantically threw a pen at the window of his office, hoping to get the attention of one of the agents working down below. He was relieved to see that Diana heard the pen hit the window and was making her way up the stairs as quickly as she could. As he watched her ascending the stairs, he listened desperately to the phone clutched to his ear. He could hear Neal's anxious voice, as well as more gunfire and shouting from another source. His blood ran cold as he heard his partner's voice one last time before the connection ended.

"Peter…help…"

Neal couldn't believe that he had passed out. Logically, he knew that he had been shot and that he had just been in a roll-over car accident, as well, but he wasn't usually the type of guy that passed out. The only other time he could remember ever passing out was when he was ten and had taken a tumble off of his neighbor's rooftop, landing on her shrubbery bush before bouncing off and landing on his back. According to Ellen, who had seen the whole thing happen, his head had bounced off the ground rather viciously and he had lost consciousness for several minutes.

After staying overnight in the hospital, Neal had gone home with a headache and a bruised back. He also had a bit of a bruised ego after the dressing down he had received from Ellen in front of several of the hospital staff. She wasn't particularly impressed with his antics, especially when she realized what he was doing on the rooftop to begin with. She definitely didn't want to hear any excuses or lies, so he had quickly explained to her how his motorized airplane had landed on the neighbor's roof and he had climbed up to get it down. Of course, Ellen knew that that particular motorized airplane was supposed to be a Christmas present for the boy, who had obviously been snooping in his mother's room again. Neal still remembered the continuation of the lecture he had received once they were home, not to mention the threat to the well-being of his backside if Ellen ever found out that he was snooping again.

All of these thoughts seemed to dart through his mind like lightning, as he tried to gain his bearings. Opening his eyes, he quickly realized that he was in a pitch black room. He could feel a wall behind him, as well as the carpet underneath him, and even though he couldn't see a thing, he knew that the room he was in was really small. It was also really cold.

As he lay there, he did another quick inventory of his injuries, not at all surprised to find that his shoulder hurt like hell. Reaching up to investigate, he was surprised to find that someone had actually taken the time to bandage his wound. Who would have done that?

He still felt significant pain in his ribs, head, and leg, too, but other than that, he only felt a general sense of achiness, compounded by the cold that enveloped him. All in all, he figured that he was actually pretty lucky. Well, if you could call being locked in a cold, dark room with a gunshot wound, probable broken ribs, and a concussion lucky, that is.

Once his mental inventory was done, Neal listened intently to the sounds around him. At first, he just heard a gentle susurration, but eventually he could make out the sounds of several different voices and the humming of some sort of machinery. Something about the humming of the machinery struck a chord in Neal and it wasn't long before he was able to recognize it. It was the sound of a printing press.

That sound alone drove Neal to the conclusion of where he was. Well, not necessarily where he was, but at least he knew who was behind it all. Neal shivered at the realization that he was once again firmly in the clutches of Silas Dmitri.

Once Peter realized that he had lost the connection to Neal, he strode to the door of his office, opening it just as Diana was about to barge through.

"Boss, what's going on? Did you find Neal?"

Peter felt like he was about to lose it, so he forced himself to take several deep breaths before answering his agent. After several long seconds, he was finally back in control.

"He called me, Diana, but something happened. I heard several gunshots and I think he might have been shot."

Diana looked at Peter in horror. "You think?" she asked.

"I heard a gunshot and then I heard Neal cry out, Diana," Peter explained. "It didn't sound good."

Looking down at the agents in the bullpen, Peter searched for Jones.

"Where's Jones?" he finally asked Diana.

"He just called from Neal's apartment," Diana answered. "He said that there's no sign that Neal ran. All of his clothes are there, not to mention a rather large sum of money he found stashed behind some books."

"All of that doesn't matter now," Peter said. "Neal's in trouble and I need every available agent on this."

"Okay, Boss. What do you want us to do first?"

"I need you to check with every precinct. Find out if there have been any calls regarding the sounds of gunshot. I also thought I heard the sound of a train whistle in the background. I know that's a longshot, but see what you can find out. Oh, and have one of the tech guys check out my phone. Maybe they can find out something about the phone Neal was using."

Peter watched in satisfaction as Diana jumped into action, organizing the other agents along the way. He knew that they had very little to go on, but he also knew that his team would stop at nothing to find Neal. As he stood there watching everyone, he geared himself to do the one thing that he did best. He geared himself up to find Neal Caffrey. Again.

As Neal sat in the dark, cold room, he couldn't stop his mind from replaying every single interaction he had ever had with Silas Dmitri. Neal had been twelve years old the first time he had met Silas, and he remembered taking an instant dislike to the man.

It wasn't unusual for his mother to bring a man home for dinner every once in a while, and for the most part they were nice men. For some reason, though, his mother didn't seem to like the nice ones for very long. Just as Neal had gotten used to one of them, she would break it off, citing various different reasons why it just wouldn't work out with them.

He's too boring. Too lazy. Too short. Too poor. Too ugly. Too nice. In reality, they just weren't dangerous or exciting enough for Tessa Brooks. She didn't want someone that liked to stay in at night and watch movies or take long walks on the beach. She wanted someone that would take her out dancing. Someone that rode a motorcycle or drove a fast car. She wanted someone that played outside the limits of the law… a bad boy.

Once she realized that, Neal remembered being subjected to men that were more than just a little scary. Most of them didn't like the fact that she had a kid, so he had learned to either stay in his room or get out of the house as much as he could. Neal didn't like the woman that his mother became when she was around these men, either. He couldn't stand the sound of her fake laughter or the way she acted dumb and silly around them.

The day that Silas Dmitri entered their home was a turning point in Neal's young life. His Aunt Ellen had taken on a new job and the time Neal got to spend with her was cut severely short, causing him to greatly miss her. Her new job also meant that he had to spend more and more time at his own home. He always felt like he was walking on eggshells in his own house, and it was only at Ellen's house that he felt like he could be himself.

Neal remembered he had been sitting at the dining room table with his sketch pad and pencils scattered all around when his mother walked in, leading a very tall, very big, dark-haired man.

"Danny, what are you doing?!" she yelled. "You've made such a mess of my kitchen!"

Neal remembered looking around, trying to find the mess his mother was talking about. All he saw was a glass sitting in the sink and a dish towel lying on the counter. So much for a mess, he thought to himself.

Before he could defend himself, though, his mother sat down at the table next to him. "Silas," she said in a sickeningly sweet voice. "This is my boy…..Danny, this is Silas."

Danny stood up and stuck out his hand, trying to remember his manners. The large man grabbed his hand, squeezing it harder than was necessary as he looked Danny over.

"He's a scrawny little thing, isn't he?" the man said with a cold grin.

Danny glared at the man, offended at being called scrawny. He was rather small for his age, but he definitely didn't think he was scrawny.

"Next to you, I think even Arnold Schwarzenegger would look scrawny," Danny grumbled.

A thunderous look immediately crossed over the man's face. "I think you need to teach your boy a little something about respecting his elders, Tess," the man growled.

Tessa stood up and crossed back over to Silas, placing her hands on his chest and looking up into his eyes, before turning back to her son.

"Apologize for your rudeness, right now, young man!" she demanded.

"Why?!" Danny exploded. "He started it, mom. He called me scrawny!"

"Danny Brooks, so help me…you had better drop the attitude, young man!"

Danny knew when he was cornered, so he quickly offered up a rather insincere apology. Luckily for him, no one seemed to notice that he didn't mean a word of it. Once he was done, his mother told him to clean up the mess on the table and then to go to his room.

"Wait a minute….." Silas interrupted. "Did you draw these, kid?"

Danny didn't feel like answering, so he just nodded. He cringed on the inside when Silas picked up each sketch and stared at it for several long seconds.

"You drew these yourself," he said, as if he were trying to convince himself of that. "Without any help….."

Danny nodded, wondering what the big deal was. He knew he was a good artist, but these particular sketches were really just doodles. He had no idea why the man was so interested in them and he really didn't want to stay and find out. Without another word, he gathered up everything on the table and left the room as fast as he could. There was something about Silas Dmitri that scared Danny.

Unfortunately for Danny, his mother seemed to really like Silas Dmitri and the man became an increasingly large part of their lives. Danny had learned early on that the man wasn't afraid to use his hands to keep him in line, but even more devastating than that was the fact that his mother did nothing to stop him. In fact, whenever Silas was around, his mother treated Danny in much the same way.

Danny's response to that was to make sure that he spent as little time as possible at home. Hoping that his Aunt Ellen wouldn't find out, he started hanging around the pool hall again in the afternoons. He had decided that maybe it was a good idea to start stashing some money away, just in case he found himself needing to run, so he quickly set up a hustling scam with some of the hall's most frequent patrons. Anytime someone new wandered in, Danny would spring into action, and by the time he was done, his pockets would be filled with bills.

Unfortunately, though, there always came a time when he had to go home. Neal could remember those walks home, constantly praying that Silas Dmitri wouldn't be there when he got home. More often than not, the man would be and Danny would try to slip through the door and head straight to his room.

When Danny was thirteen, things changed for the worst. To his complete and utter horror, his mother and Silas Dmitri were married. Neal could remember how his Aunt Ellen had spent hours trying to talk some sense into his mother, but Tessa Brooks had made up her mind. She loved Silas, she reasoned. Silas was good to her and to Danny, she said. Silas would be the father that Danny so desperately needed, she argued.

Danny tried to convince his mother and aunt that he would be better off if he lived with Ellen, but his mother quickly refused.

"You're my son and you belong here with me, Danny. With Silas here, we're going to be a new family."

Danny argued, but his mother was adamant that her new family would stay together. With that, Danny's new nightmare began.

It wasn't long before he found out what kind of man Silas Dmitri really was. After the wedding, Silas started bringing some of his friends to the house, where they would sit around the kitchen table for hours, drinking vodka and whiskey. Danny had no idea what they were talking about, but he did notice that they would often have blueprints to some building spread out on the table in front of them. One night, after the men had left, Danny went downstairs to get a drink and noticed that the blueprint was still spread out on the table. Looking around to make sure that Silas wasn't anywhere around, he looked at it closely, trying to figure out what it was.

From what Danny could tell, it looked like the blueprints to a bank. He wondered what Silas and his cohorts could be planning, but he knew better than to ask. Instead, Danny started to snoop around a little more, anytime Silas had his friends over. He was usually pretty good at snooping, but of course his luck was bound to run out eventually. The night it happened was one of the scariest nights of his life.

Danny, by that time, had finally figured out that Silas and his friends were planning on robbing a bank to get at some sort of valuable bond that was stored in its vaults. Even though he knew that what they were planning was wrong, he couldn't help but feel intrigued by the whole thing. As he listened, he figured out that their plan was to replace the bond with a counterfeit one, making it less likely that someone would find out if they were able to get in and out without notice.

Danny was hiding behind the couch, listening to everything they were talking about, when it happened. One minute he was kneeling down, trying to control his breathing so as not to give himself away, and the next minute he was being lifted up by the collar of his pajamas by a man that had apparently just come out of the bathroom.

The look on Silas Dmitri's face when he realized that his step-son was spying on them was terrifying. Before Danny could do anything, Silas had crossed the room and backhanded him across the face. The slap had been so powerful that the man holding onto Danny had lost his grip, causing the boy to fall to the ground. For several long seconds, Danny stayed on the floor, curled up into a tight ball, until Silas finally picked him up and carried him out of the room. That had been the first time that Silas Dmitri had taken his belt to Danny.

As Neal shivered in the cold, the memories of his time with Silas nearly overwhelmed him. He had always thought of himself as a competent, strong man, but the presence of Silas Dmitri seemed to transform him back into his thirteen year old self.

He suddenly felt powerless and defenseless and he knew that if he were to survive this ordeal, he needed to get a grip on himself. Yes, Dmitri was a powerful man, but Neal had proven time and again that he was smarter. He had been in worse predicaments and had found ways to escape, so as he sat in the dark room, shivering so harshly that his bones were starting to ache even more, he cleared his head and tried to figure out a way out of his current situation. His only consolation was knowing that Peter was doing his very best to find him.

"Any luck?" Peter asked Diana as soon as she walked into his office.

"Not yet, boss. You'd be surprised at how many calls were made reporting the sound of gunshots at that time. The list is long, but I have at least ten agents checking on every report."

Peter dropped down into his chair, frustrated at the fact that they really had nothing to go on. Before anything else could be said, Jones flew through the door with a strange look.

"Peter, I don't know if this is anything important, but Precinct 34 just got a report of a taxi cab being stolen a block from here. The driver said that a man with a gun forced him out of his cab and then drove off with it. The tech guys are trying to track the GPS right now.

Peter jumped up and followed Jones out of the office. He had a feeling that they finally had a lead!

"Hang in there, Neal," he said to himself. "I'm coming."

Neal's head was pounding fiercely and he was doing everything he could not to lose the meager contents of his stomach. His mouth was so dry and he desperately needed to use the bathroom, so all in all, he was completely miserable.

As he tried to keep his mind off of his multiple discomforts, he tried desperately to come up with a plan. Slowly standing up, he walked around the room, trying to figure out where the door was. After almost a complete circuit of the small space, he finally found what he thought was the door. Of course, he wasn't surprised to find that the door had no door handle and no foreseeable way to get to the door hinges, either. He was hoping that maybe they had just stashed him in a spare closet, but it was obvious that this particular space was made to securely hide someone away.

The space itself was no more than an six by six foot space and Neal was thankful that he wasn't prone to claustrophobia. After walking around the small space three separate times, he sat back down next to the door, trying to think through his extremely limited options. Just as he had figured out that his only option was to wait for someone to open the door from the outside, he heard a key being inserted into the lock.

The door opened and Neal was blinded by the bright light that poured into the space. He could tell that someone was standing in the doorway, but until his eyes adjusted he wouldn't be able to see them clearly. Seconds later, this became a moot point, when Neal heard the unmistakable voice of Silas Dmitri.

"Hello, Danny…Did you miss me, son?"

Author's note: First off, I want to apologize for the wait. Since I left you all with a little bit of a cliffhanger in the last chapter, I really wanted to update quickly. Alas…the holidays were a little busier than expected, so I didn't get a chance. Anyway, I finally found some time to write and I really hope that you enjoy this chapter. Poor Neal has found himself in a little bit of a tight spot, but don't worry…. Peter's doing everything he can to track down his partner.

I'm hoping the back and forth isn't making things too confusing to read. If it is, let me know, okay? I love to hear your thoughts on Silas Dmitri and the story as a whole, too. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing. And Happy New Year to you all!